


Dealing With Veggies

by funkdoc1112



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Advice, Family Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:41:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27692914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/funkdoc1112/pseuds/funkdoc1112
Summary: When Gohan takes a break from his college stress to help Goku with his farming job, the two have a much needed conversation about family and Saiyans. Post-Buu, pre-Battle of Gods
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19





	Dealing With Veggies

**This one deviates from Super's timeline just slightly (really just disregards the first episode tbh). Three years after Buu, two years before Battle of Gods. If I owned Dragon Ball why would I be writing fanfiction of it?**

"Eww, carrots?!"

When one's wife makes them step away from hours of training for eight-hour days of labor maintaining a field of radishes, one has to occasionally mix things up. So, on a whim, Goku went to a local farmer's market and bought a pack of seeds completely blind; the mystery was the draw. The chance to bring some new flavor to the field while having to guess what that flavor was.

Only problem? Well, when Goku arrived at the field in the morning, he saw the mystery finally reveal itself - carrots, his least favorite food on the planet.

But you know what? That was okay. Goku hopped back into his tractor, never one to dwell or complain for too long; so what if the mystery turned out to be an orange and pointy disappointment? That just meant another obstacle to try to make the best of.

As Goku aimlessly ran his tractor across the field, he thought of the potential with carrots. They _were_ a lot more popular than radishes, at least. In fact, if you were to round up all of the vegetables in the world, carrots might have just been the star of the show. Carrot bread, carrot cakes, carrot soup, mashed carrot, carrot cookies. Goku found none of them appetizing, but he had to admit they were popular. And think of the rabbits that would come around!

There was the silver lining - he'd get a bigger haul from carrots than radishes. Maybe they'd make enough money off of it that Chi-Chi wouldn't make him have to work anymore.

He was about to start some actual work before a familiar voice interrupted him.

"Hey dad, room for one more?"

Ah, Gohan. His 20-year old son hadn't been around much thanks to college, so he was always a welcome sight. The boy looked like he'd seen better days, though.

"Sheesh, Gohan, your hair!" Goku remarked. Gohan's hair was the longest it'd been since the good ol' days of the Room of Spirit & Time and tied up in a ponytail. And with the bags under his eyes and unattended stubble decorating his jaw, it looked like hadn't gotten sleep.

"Yeah, studying for finals has been hell. Haven't really been paying much attention to my hair!" Gohan replied with a strained smile as he floated down to the field. "But our study group coach said it's best we step away every now and then to relax our brains. Kinda reminded me of what you were talking about back when we were training for Cell."

Goku cheerfully nodded. It was hard not to feel nostalgia for those days, when he was finally able to make up for lost time with his son even with the horrible threat looming.

"So I figured, why not hang out with my dad? Mom said you were working, so I'll help out."

"Awesome! I was just 'bout to head for the forest. This fence is on its last legs thanks to the weather lately, so it's time I built a new one," Goku said. Gohan looked at the fence, and his father was right - the wood was battered and chipped up, some parts of the fence broken off entirely.

"Not the worst way to work out," Gohan said. "Let's get started!"

The two leapt over the remains of the old fence and into the woods. They always preferred not to use anything Ki-related on their excursions - where was the fun in shortcuts? On foot and with their bare hands was the way to go.

"So I see you're mixing it up a bit with the crops," Gohan said as they raced through the fields.

"Yeah, but I'm a lil' disappointed, though. I don't like carrots," Goku said, making Gohan stop in his tracks.

"Really? There's a food on this planet that you _don't_ like?"

"Yeah, I know, crazy right?" Goku replied with a grin that quickly sank into a frown as he thought about the vegetable. "It's just real bitter and stale to me, y'know?"

"Bitter? C'mon, dad, carrots are probably the sweetest vegetables there are besides corn. I figured you'd love that."

"I just don't see it, man!"

Now that Gohan thought about it, his mother _did_ rarely cook anything involving carrots in the recipe. In fact, the only time he ate anything with carrots in it on a consistent basis were the seven years Goku was dead. Even the most welcoming stomach in the universe had a blacklist, he supposed.

The two finally reached a patch of land rich with trees. By Goku and Gohan's estimations, four would suffice. Using only their fists the father and son commenced to knocking them down and hauling two apiece over their shoulders. A few minutes later, they returned to the field, laid the massive trunks down and got to chopping.

Goku carefully measured the necessary sizes and chopped the wood up accordingly; in no time, he had a pretty sizable pile of blocks. When he saw Gohan's smaller pile, he couldn't resist needling him.

"A lil' slow there, ain't we, son?"

Gohan replied with his typical meek laughter. "Yeah, I guess I'm a little rusty."

That was all the motivation Gohan needed to catch up with Goku's pace. In fact, in little time at all, he had a bigger pile than his father. Not that it mattered much, but Gohan was still the stronger of the two - a thought he never failed to find strange. He was so used to looking up to his dad that the idea of besting him in a battle of raw strength felt like a foreign concept.

Goku compared the two piles and conceded with a pat on his son's shoulder. "Attaboy!"

Though he didn't count on Gohan resuming his training in any significant capacity - and he was perfectly fine with it - Goku still liked to encourage his son. He didn't enjoy seeing him always feeling inadequate, so a little push here and there went a long way.

Gohan was a step ahead of him in gathering up tools from the shed, too. When he returned, Goku figured it was a good time for small talk.

"So, how's Videl holdin' up?" Goku asked. "Your mom was kinda worried about y'all not havin' supervision up there; kinda silly to me, though."

Gohan's cheeks flushed red, and not just because of the implication that definitely flew over his father's head. In fact, his eyes actually grew sullen. "She's doing fine, but, that's actually part of why I'm here and not over at school."

Curious concern overcame Goku while he observed his son sit glumly atop the pile of wood, his eyes to the grass out of embarrassment. "We're kinda on the rocks. I wouldn't say we broke up, but it's not looking good right now."

"Oh, um, I see," said the ill-equipped Goku.

Gohan took a deep breath. "Oh, what am I doing? I shouldn't pile this up on you. It's more of a Yamcha subject, I guess," he said with a bitter laugh.

"Nah, don't worry about it! My grandpa used to say, 'If it's too heavy for your chest then you better swat it off!'" He didn't have much opportunity to talk to Gohan about personal stuff like this, so he'd take what he could get.

"Heh, good advice." Gohan looked up at the clouds - why did some of them have to be shaped like Videl's face? Whatever. "Well, it's just...I dunno. She used to be involved in a lot of sports but jumped through a lot of hoops to get more time with me, but….I'm kinda knee-deep in my schoolwork, internships, organizations...that kinda stuff. She's making all this time for me and I can't do the same for her."

"I see…"

"Yeah, she said I'm being -"

"Selfish?" Goku completed.

"Yup, that's the word," Gohan said with a sardonic smile.

"Believe me, I know that word pret-tay well," Goku sang as he stomped on the field with precisely enough force to uproot the battered fence and knock it over.

Gohan was deep enough in his thoughts about his problems that he didn't really pick up his father's anwer. "I mean, she's right. I get it. But I'm making a ton of progress with my studies and I can't afford to let up. Plus, I like it."

Goku knocked his pile of wood over and laid out all of the pieces on the ground, moving his eyes back and forth between the fence and the blocks to get a decent enough picture in his mind. "Sounds like me an' your mom sometimes."

"Hm?"

"She said it once, after I first came back," Goku said as he grabbed a hammer with one hand and picked up a nail from a pile in the other. "Not like, _Vegeta_ selfish, but just, y'know - doin' my own thing and not thinkin' about her. Or you and Goten."

"Yeah, I figured," Gohan replied, sounding more bitter than intended. He gasped, embarrassed. "Sorr, I mean-"

Goku swiped his hand away from hammering to wave it dismissively at Gohan. "Nah, don't sweat it. Like, I get it now. I kinda always did, actually. Heck, I'm honestly still surprised you don't have any hard feelings with me."

"It wasn't always that way - well you weren't there for it at least." Gohan yelped in frustration when he realized how sour that came off, too, which made Goku laugh. He decided to just brush it off and resume. "Ugh, I mean...when you were dead, there was a small period. It was probably just hormones throwing me off-balance, but 14 and 15 year-old me wasn't too fond of you."

"Yeah, I bet!"

"It was actually Vegeta of all people who helped me out there. I mean, he mostly just said, 'Your clown father's dead and not coming back! Get over it, brat!'" Gohan said in a raspy-voiced, vaguely posh-accented imitation of the Saiyan prince that made Goku accidentally hammer his own finger from laughing so hard. "But he helped me understand the ways of a full-blooded Saiyan. All of your choices made more sense to me."

"Yeah, about that," Goku answered warily, "When I chose to stay dead, I meant everything I said. But it was deeper than just being a target; my choices were putting you guys and the whole planet in danger. My brother - what was his name again?" Before he could continue, he noticed a swarm of beetles making their way on the crops. "Ah crap, the radishes!"

A light chuckle escaped Gohan's lips. Goku broke his no-Ki rule to safely brush the critters away with a gust of a kiai-summonded wind. "Shoo!" he yelled, waving off the few that remained. He returned to fencing. "Well, anyway, when my brother told me about who I really was, and what the Saiyans did, I was horrified. When he kidnapped you, from that moment on I wanted nothing to do with the Saiyan race. Buuuuut, it didn't take. 'Cause - oh, come on, I didn't say go for the carrots instead!"

The beleaguered Saiyan had to step away again to wave the hungry beetles off of the carrot crops, too. When he resumed building the fence, he wiped his forehead in relief. "Alright, I think the veggies are all safe now. I thought I could just bury who I really was, but it's like from that moment on I started makin' crazier and crazier decisions just to get a fight. Not that I didn't always prefer to fight first, but, I got more reckless about it."

He stood up from the layout of wood and looked at the fencing around the carrot field just to make sure he had enough.

"It's like I pushed 'Goku' aside and let 'Kakarot' run the show sometimes, y'know?"

Gohan followed Goku's glance to the carrot field. He never knew his father could be so profound. "Heh, no wonder you don't like carrots."

"Huh?"

Oh, right.

"I coulda stopped Dr. Gero before he could even start workin' on the Androids, but I didn't, 'cause I wanted to fight 'em. When I heard Vegeta let Cell absorb 18, 'course I figured, 'That's Vegeta for ya!' But then I wondered - what if you and I went in the Room first and that were _me_ in that spot?"

Gohan shifted awkwardly on the pile of wood in which he sat. "Well, Trunks told me Vegeta actually attacked him when he tried to stop him. You wouldn't have gone that far, right?"

"'Course not. But who's to say I wouldn'ta tried to convince you?"

As Goku figured, the question caught Gohan completely off-guard. "I was goin' down the wrong path, an' that's why I thought we were better off with you."

Gohan sprung up from the pile, causing the blocks to topple over. "Don't say that, dad! If I didn't screw up, you would've never had to die."

"That might be true, but when Cell was puttin' the beats on you, Piccolo gave me the rudest awakenin' of my life; I didn't know you as well as I thought."

"What do you mean?"

"You're not like me. You don't live for high-stakes fights. But I never considered it an' threw you in there. I mean, holy _crap_ , did it pay off, but I shouldn'ta put it all in the hands o' somebody who just wanted to be a normal kid." Goku stopped building and turned to face his son, who was shuddering. "And yeah, you did kinda bungle it, but you were, like, ten. I shoulda thought about what that rage would do to you instead of treatin' it like a secret weapon."

"You're too hard on yourself, dad," Gohan said, observing the carrots from the corner of his eye. "If you didn't love fighting so much, we wouldn't be able to feed off your confidence."

Goku playfully slapped Gohan on the shoulder. "Ain't that the truth. I mean, I was pretty at ease with death, but when I got my life back I realized how much I missed you, your mom, everything. I had a whole other son and didn't even know him!"

When he noticed Gohan's eyes ease up, Goku nodded and resumed working on the fence. "'Course, all my bad decisions dealin' with Buu weren't so selfish, but they were definitely dumb. I didn't dedicate myself to fightin' just to pile the stakes onto kids who just happened to be good at fightin' but ain't natural at it. Why force the torch in your hands?"

"When you put it that way, you're right," Gohan said. He looked down at the pile wooden blocks laying below him compared to all the fencing Goku had already gotten done, and hung his head in embarrassment. "Here we are talking about you being selfish, and I'm just sitting here watching you do all the work." _As usual…_

"Aww, don't sweat it! You've got a lot on your mind is all!" Goku said, resuming his work. "Boy, did we veer off a little, huh? So anyway, your mom and I. We argue about it sometimes, and she's right. Buuut, the biggest problem she has isn't just how I go off and do my own thing - it's that I leave her high 'n dry 'n don't pull my weight around the house. So, that's why I'm out here. She can do her thing without worryin' to death about money."

Gohan finally grabbed a hammer and picked up a nail from the same pile. "Okay, I see what you mean, now. She can't be the only one making sacrifices, I guess."

"And just dial it back, a lil'. You're like, 20, right? Enjoy bein' young cuz you'll never know when you're an old fart like me!" Goku said, to Gohan's head shaking. _Old fart? Yeah, right._

"And y'all are too young to argue 'bout that stuff, anyway. Wait 'til you're married," Goku advised.

Gohan lightly chuckled. "Y'know, up until the arguments started, that was on my mind, too. You and mom got married around my age, too, right? What was it like?"

"Your mom never really told you how we got married, did she?" Goku said with a mischievous giggle. "I didn't even know what marriage actually was. She just asked me to do it the one time we met when we were kids and I just said yeah 'cause I thought it was like, a feast or somethin'. When she showed up again at the martial arts tournament to follow through, I wasn't just gonna break a promise!"

Gohan almost fell over in disbelief. "Suddenly everything makes sense."

"'Course, I love her now! All of you guys," Goku said. "So if you need tps on marriage, come to me. For instance, on wedding night, make sure you know how to have sex with her."

Gohan fell face-first into his pile of wood. " _DAAAAAD!"_

"What? I mean if you need some pointers, I can show ya."

So this was the curse of having such an open and honest father. Gohan stumbled back to his feet. "I think I'll pass. Besides, we've kinda, already…" This was _not_ going where Gohan thought it would.

Before he could get it all out, Goku gave him a slap on the shoulder. "Whoa, really?! Congratulations, Gohan!" _What?_ "You're finally gonna have a kid of your own!"

Oh. "Huh, what? She's not _pregnant_ , we've just, y'know, done it before."

"You mean you just do it, just to _do it_? Sheesh, you're gettin' more like Vegeta!" Actually, now that he thought about it it _was_ pretty neat.

"Can we talk about literally _anything_ else?!" Gohan pleaded, his face as red as the radishes. WIth how mischievously his dad giggled, Gohan almost suspected he was doing it on purpose.

With a lot more off their chest than they ever realized, Goku and Gohan put the fence together and gathered up all the radishes and carrots to prepare for Goku's delivery the next day. After a hard day's work, the father and son replenished their energy with some of Chi-Chi's world-famous cooking. Dinners with the whole family had been rare in Gohan's college years, so they all relished it.

In particular, Goku really enjoyed the rice Chi-Chi had made. "Man, Chi-Chi, what's in this stuff? It's _delicious!_ "

"You can thank Gohan for givin' me the idea," Chi-Chi replied. "I know ya don't like carrots but I stewed it with some rice and a lil' cup o' milk. And then I added my own lil' touch o' _Negi_ onion seasonin'. Good, ain't it?"

Goku stared at his plate in amazement. "Whoah, no kidding! I guess carrots ain't so bad with he right stuff mixed in, huh?"

"No doubt about it, dad." Gohan said, glad the recipe worked out.

His appetite more than satiated, Goku headed to the bathroom to wash away all the dirt and exhaustion. He thought about his conversation with Gohan; the two didn't always have talks like that, and he always appreciated them. His son was always wise beyond his years; every bit as profound as the man he was named after. He even got him to come around to carrots!

Then, a light bulb went off in his head. Carrots...Kakarot. Vegeta...Vegetable. And Radish! His brother was named Raditz! His shower a distant memory, Goku raced to the living room. He grabbed the phone and dialed Capsule Corp's number, eager to let Vegeta in on his ingenious discovery. He learned the hard way not to teleport to Vegeta unannounced when Bulma was within his vicinity, so he stuck to the phone when he needed to speak with him on a whim. After a few rings, Bulma picked up, and he asked her to put Vegeta on the phone.

" _ **What?**_ " asked the barely restrained voice of Vegeta over the phone.

"Have you ever noticed that all the Saiyans are named after vegetables?!" Goku squealed.

_*click*_


End file.
